Dear asshole professor,
If you don’t have the judgment to stop yourself from tweeting something like that, you are too stupid to do good research.
Signed,
An “obese” professor with a PhD, a kick-ass cv, a federal grant, and a damn good job
p.s. Fuck you!

He is an “evolutionary” psychologist. This subfield of psychology includes more sexist assholes than you would believe. In part it’s because there is no way to study current human behavior and link it conclusively to evolution. So they settle for doing a bunch of shitty surveys about how women are controlled by their menstrual cycles and men are supposed to have a lot of sex with a lot of women.

Well shit. It’s one thing I’m from NM that my husband disses on the education that NM lacks in but now this stuipid shit makes our University even more worser. Yes hubby. I said. Worser. Ugh. I hope the UNM Lobos take a nice big bite out of him with an ass chewing.

So glad you caught this. For some reason people think that these public forums (facebook, twitter, what have you) are private and that they won’t be held accountable for what they say on here. I know people at a law firm who have been taken to task for behaving inappropriately on public forums (letting out hints about clients, or complaining about a case) and I’m not sure there are policies in place to prevent this behavior other than shaming and taking them to task for it but that is after it happened. I guess here is a self monitored policy – good judgement?

Nope. In fact, I believe overconsumption of carbs and writing of dissertations go hand in hand. My thesis was personally written on Dunkin Donuts half caf, maple frosted donuts, and multiple tins of rescue remedy pastilles (black currant, natch). Would have been even more carbs if I had drank more, but alas, I was nursing the thesis kitten.

Right? I (only) completed a thesis but I can tell you that not caring too much about my diet afforded me the time necessary to devote to researching and writing. On the flip side, I was “thin” in undergrad yet completely consumed by an ED and would not have had the mental ability to complete a large project.

So Dr. Miller, I guess the medical field (you know, actual Doctors) lack mental willpower and discipline? So many fatties. Banish them all.

Just when I think I am losing faith in GOMI, y’all post this. Keep fighting the good fight.

The past six months in grad school are the hardest I’ve worked in the lab thus far. Also, I’ve gained 15 pounds, because when I think “Oh, I could go run for an hour” or “Oh, hey, I could set up this PCR in an hour, and then that’s another hour of sleep I can get,” the PCR almost always wins out.

Also, when I leave the lab at 10, it’s a lot easier to pick up take out for me and my husband than to cook and eat at 11:30, although we do a lot of that do.

Preach! I didn’t gain the freshman 15, I gained the grad school, like, 20. I worked full-time and took a full course load (no choice, cohort program) for two years including summers. THEN I had a full-time required internship for a year and worked nights and weekends because that internship was unpaid. By the end, there were days when I was so tired I would just cry.

So, basically, his judgmental self can go jump off a cliff. Seriously.

Look, you have to remember: this dude’s in evolutionary psychology. Those are the douchecanoes you see having intellectual discussions at bars occasionally while the real scientists like us are napping under our benches halfway through a 48 hour run of 1 hour timepoints or prepping 296 sequencing reactions. He’s not like us, he’s not had the same experience, so he LITERALLY has no frame of reference to even BEGIN “getting it.” I’m constantly flummoxed when people in other fields say “Oh, you know, grad school is just lots of reading.”

omg molecular biologists group hug. I recently generated 5 cell lines in parallel, now I have to do biochemical assays and drug response assays with all of them. FML, I literally spend now 14 hours 7 days a week in the lab and my project should be wrapped up in 3 months.

There’s a reason we have support groups. And also reasons why a lot of us say EFF THIS and leave. Between the workload and the dismal job prospects for the “traditional” PI type role I’m shocked people still go to grad school. Full disclosure: I bailed on my PhD in year 6 when I saw the terrabytes of data I had STILL didn’t give me a clear picture of what was happening in my system. “Phenotype overlaps with wild type” is the WORST PHRASE IN SCIENCE.

I am much happier now. I also make money. There is life after doctoral programs.

So much truth. I’ve had people say, “Oh, so you can pretty much work anywhere, right?” And I’m like…”No…I can work at my lab bench. If I’m lucky, I can go home and analyze data at 10 PM, but I prefer to do it at my work computer anyway.”

Right, grad school in molecular biology (and chemistry and biochemistry) is a JOB. I took classes occasionally, a taught classes occasionally, I read a lot of papers, but 40 hours a week I was at my bench, pipetman in hand. Every day. It was more real job than the real job I have now.

Preach. I just finished my master’s degree while working and there was more than one carb-heavy fast food run simply to keep myself sane and increase the chances I’d pass my exams and show up for work the next day.
If I were getting a PhD I would expect an IV of vodka and a horse trough of Bugles.

I tell people the skill I honed the most in graduate school (MA and PhD) was the ability to sense free food within a mile radius. My nose twitches and my brain says “Cookies, next building over, third floor” or “A BOOK REP BROUGHT SAMMICHES!” and my entire limbic system riots until those sammiches are found.

I have never in my life seen more baked goods in one place at any given time than when I worked in the faculty office for a medical school. Pastries at breakfast, sandwiches for lunch, late evening pizza. And cookies at every meal – giant trays of them.

Yes I would have said it shows you’ll be able to handle the snacking that seems to be part and parcel of writing a thesis. I’m just about to submit my PhD, it’s depressing to think there’s fuckwits like this running around with jobs in academia yet there’s no academic jobs on the horizon for me. What a dickhole. Good to know that being a completely vile person does not rule you out of the dissertation process, wonderful.

PS my thesis is getting written on coffee, cup-o-soup, lindt chocolate and raisin toast. And digestive biscuits. I should be thanking McVitie’s in my acknowledgements.

Furious George, I dare you to thank McVities in your acknowledgements, you would die laughing if you saw mine…..lets just say it included some non humans…..oh and congrats also! I hope they were the chocolate digestives. I love those…..(hard not to eat the whole packet at once though…). There is really no good raisin bread in the US that I can find….

What kills me here is that he is admitting that he googles people prior to admittance, and decides based on their looks. Because he isn’t talking about admitted students – he is talking about students who have not been admitted, and since he hasn’t seen those people yet, clearly finding out what they look like has been an important part of the process for him.

Also, yes, Evo Pysch is just full of assholes, so this shouldn’t be a surprise. It’s where you go if you can’t do real science. Sadly, he is tenured, so nobody will care or do anything. Still, being an asshole is, I suppose, its own punishment.

..or it’s like many schools where interviews come AFTER admission and are used for lab placement. I’ve only known a couple of people who were asked not to return post-recruitment weekend and they were just… achingly awful. One guy responded to anything he liked by humping it. I’m sure that was funny to his friends, but he almost knocked over my centrifuge and that’s the point I was like “Ahhhh… Let’s NOT with this one, okay?”

My bet is that he is teaching some sort of “ethics” course. He can show them that greed is good and that screwing over other people to get what you want is a valid human social endeavor cause, you know, evolution. Sociobiology err I mean evolutionary psychology is fantastic for legitimizing a lack of a moral compass.

That gif is killing me with its awesome. I decided that in honor of that asshat I would eat an entire pan of Rice Krispies treats. (I had already gorged but what the hell, this round of indigestion is for you, dr. Ass!)

I have politely e-mailed the screenshot to his department chair, graduate program director, area head, and the chair at his temporary NY department. I’m sure they will hear from other sources but I want to be DAMN sure they know about this.
If I were in charge of his department, I would exclude him from all future graduate recruitment decisions and cross my fingers that nobody sued me for being rejected in prior years. If the world were fair he would be punished in some way, but I would be shocked (and delighted!) if he was fired.